For five years she has been making daily visits to her son in Kerobokan jail, Bali, and Helene Le Touzey still cries as she tells the story of what happened to him.

As she watched a distressed Schapelle Corby prepare for court this week, the 54-year-old French woman found herself weeping again, this time for Corby's future, which reminds her so much of her son's painful past.

"There are so many similarities between the two," Ms Le Touzey said as she ran through the details of the case of her son, Michael Loic Blanc.

He was 26 when he flew from India into Denpasar on Boxing Day 1999, and put his bag through the X-ray machine, as Corby did with her boogie-board bag. Corby is 27.

When customs officers saw something suspicious, they took him to one room and the dive bag containing two scuba tanks to another, a breach of customs practice like that which Corby has complained about.

Blanc says he was called into the second room, and confronted with the tanks already cut open and a 3.8-kilogram pile of hashish, just 300 grams less than the amount of marijuana in Corby's luggage.

He denies the drugs were his and believes they, like the tanks, were owned by a friend called Philip. Blanc had been living in Bali for a year, says he met Philip there, travelled with him to India and returned alone with the dive bag and the tanks.

But Blanc has been unable to provide more of Philip's name that could see him identified.

To try to show his innocence, Blanc asked police to fingerprint the bags containing the hashish, but they failed to do so, just as they failed to do with Corby's plastic bags of marijuana.

Ms Le Touzey remembers the shock of the trial clearly, and can understand the distress it is now causing Corby.

"The prosecutor said, 'Michael is a very nice guy, he's very young, he's been very polite in the court and has no criminal record - I ask for the death sentence'," she said.

"The judge said Michael is fully guilty. 'I sentence him to life imprisonment'."

Ms Le Touzey was horrified, and immediately helped her son appeal. So did the prosecutor, who argued that life was too lenient and again sought death.

As usual, there were no appeal hearings and Ms Le Touzey only learnt she had failed 12 days after the decision came down.

She appealed again and this time the Supreme Court kept the life sentence but added a fine of about $A70,000. If the money was not paid an extra six months' jail would be added.

Before she became a student of the Indonesian legal system, Ms Le Touzey enjoyed a comfortable life with another son in Bonneville, in the French Alps, where she worked as an accountant and liked to ski, ride horses and go to concerts.

She abandoned all that when Michael was convicted, moved to Bali, where she lives alone in a rented house, surviving on donations from friends and groups in France who fight for her son's freedom.

"When this happened I got a big lesson about life. I was not very rich, but life was comfortable, easy, not stressed, and when I got here I got a reality check and I had to learn very fast many things I never knew before."

She is at the prison every weekday afternoon, and helps inmates from all parts of the world, still touched by others she sees in the black hole of despair her son used to occupy.

On Wednesdays she takes two takeaway couscous meals to Michael and a friend, a gift the Warasan Restaurant has donated every week since his conviction. She gives money to some, food to others, writes letters and fills forms for those who cannot afford the lawyers they need.

Nearly all are there for drug offences, and nearly all claim innocence, but she says she is a realist and knows it is not true.

She knows that children can stray from an honest path, but has no doubts about her son.

"If he was such a guy I would not have come here to live. I would support him, but I would stay in France and send money."

What irks her about the Denpasar jail is that punishments are so disproportionate to crimes and that prisoners all say they must pay prosecutors to get their sentences reduced.

When her son was arrested, a French official told her it would cost between 800,000 and 1 million French francs to secure a sentence of about 15 years, a sum she declined to pay.

Her view is that public pressure has always been her son's best hope and will be for Corby. The media coverage her son's case received in France prompted the Government to negotiate a prisoner exchange treaty with Indonesia, just as Corby's case has prompted similar talks.

But Ms Le Touzey said the document is still not finalised after two years and Corby will need to be patient. Because her son has now completed five years in jail, he has been allowed to apply for remissions.

He is smiling now and touched with optimism because he hopes to have his sentence converted to 20 years, reduced by time served.

Once that happens, and the agreement with France is finalised, he should go home.

The belief that freedom will one day be possible is what Helene Le Touzey says has got her and her son though the past five years and what Corby too must learn to live for.

"Never give up; that's all we can do," she says.